3.6-magnitude earthquake strikes Maryland

President Barack Obama told reporters Friday he did not feel the earthquake that rattled parts of suburban Washington early in the morning.


The rare quake, which struck about 5 a.m., was centered about 20 miles northwest of the capital, the U.S.

Geological Survey said. It had a magnitude of 3.6 -- relatively mild by earthquake standards but stronger than any other quake to shake the region in the past 35 years, the agency said.

Steve Dolce, a CNN technical manager, said his house in Germantown, Maryland, "vibrated slightly" for about 10 seconds.

"I looked out the window ... wondered if it was a plane or something, then I checked my BlackBerry and saw a dozen e-mails alerting the small quake," he added.

The earthquake was the first with a magnitude of more than 3 near Washington since 1974, said Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist at the USGS National Earthquake Information Center.

"This is a significant event for the region," she said.

About an hour after the quake, Vaughan said, more than 5,500 people had reported feeling it across 
Maryland, in nearby Washington, and in states including West Virginia, Virginia and Delaware.

"It was really loud, like a plane flying really low. I had never felt anything like it," said Anne Ngunjiri, 30, of Gaithersburg, Maryland. "I was jolted out of bed. All my neighbors woke up. After it passed, I thought it could be an earthquake, and lay in bed hoping there were no aftershocks."

Judy Rudolph, 64, said she was writing e-mails in bed in Rockville, Maryland, when her house started to shake.

"My first reaction was the noise ... I thought it was an explosion," she said.

She said she'd never felt anything like it in her 31 years living there.

Until Friday, the largest earthquake recorded within about 50 miles of Gaithersberg since 1974 was a 2.7-magnitude quake in 1993, Vaughan said.

But geologically speaking, she said it was "not completely unexpected" for a 3.6-magnitude quake to hit there.
"Occasionally these things do happen even east of the Rockies, even though it's not really on a plate boundary where we expect earthquakes. ... Faults do exist from when the continent was forming. There are small faults that do exist within this area," she said.

Vaughan said major structural damage was unlikely, but people may experience aftershocks for the next day, or even a week or two after the quake.

Washington's Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency said no injuries or property damage had been reported.

The last earthquake in Maryland occurred on October 8, 2007, according to the USGS website. It was a 1.7-magnitude quake centered about 5 miles northwest of Baltimore. 

'Inception' movie is coming up to the big screen

"I hate my dreams. They're so ... infantile." Heaven knows what artist Laurie Anderson would make of Christopher Nolan's first film since "The Dark Knight," but if audiences don't go for it, we're more likely to hear a different complaint: It's just too darned complex.


A spectacular fantasy thriller based on Nolan's own original screenplay, "Inception" is the smartest CGI head-trip since "The Matrix." The premise is so out-there, it requires not just a leap of faith but also too much screen time to explain, so do yourself a favor and pay attention.

Leonardo DiCaprio is Cobb, an "excavator," who digs around in people's subconscious while they're catching some zzzzs. This act of infiltration is "not strictly legal"; the motive is not therapeutic but espionage and theft.

It's also not a solo operation. To do the job properly requires an "architect," basically someone to design an appropriate dreamscape, something vivid and detailed enough to keep the dreamer's defenses down.

Depending on the complexity of the project, it might also require a "burglar," a "chemist" and preferably someone on the outside to administer a well-timed wake up call.

Cobb's partners include Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt); a newbie, Ariadne (Ellen Page); Yusuf (Dileep Rao); and Eames (Tom Hardy). Their client, Saito (Ken Watanabe), wants more than access to a rival industrialist's grey matter; he requires Cobb to plant an idea in there that will dismantle an entire conglomerate.

As if that weren't hard enough, Cobb is also plagued with keeping his own demons at bay, in the form of an angry dead wife (Marion Cotillard). DiCaprio evidently hasn't got "Shutter Island" out of his system yet.

A kind of meta-heist movie, "Inception" evokes Philip K. Dick's cerebral sci-fi, the exploration of alternate states of consciousness, memory and fantasy. But these are also Nolan's themes, familiar from the amnesiac noir of "Memento" and the many, varied mind-games practiced by the warring magicians in "The Prestige" as well as the psychological warfare between Batman and his adversaries (fans of that series will recognize several familiar faces popping up here).

"An idea is like a virus," says Cobb, and that idea too might have been born in Gotham City or in the rabid enthusiasm that greeted "The Dark Knight."

Like "Memento" and "The Prestige," "Inception" is constructed as a box of tricks. Ariadne (who helped Theseus slay the minotaur in Greek mythology) devises labyrinths that are also escape hatches, and that metaphor of the maze runs through "Inception," which is itself a puzzle to be navigated by filmmaker and audience alike.

In the course of probing his subject's subconscious, Cobb escorts him into a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream. If it's a little disappointing that each level plays out as a straight-up action thriller (this guy really should get out more), the rules of this game are delightfully devious.
iReport: Share your review of "Inception"

He has a tendency to over-complicate, but nobody bends time more ingeniously than Nolan. Three minutes in one dream might correspond to an hour in the next, and both transpire in a matter of seconds up in the real world. Gloriously, real world physics are refracted in the dream zones -- gravity just drops out like a faulty signal -- and if the dreamer starts to stir, the universe crumbles. (The Big One: the ultimate Angeleno nightmare.)
It certainly hasn't escaped Nolan's attention that this dream life functions as a metaphor for the movies.

Ariadne is a production designer, Cobb an actor-director. Extras in the dream -- ordinary passers-by -- are known as "projections," and they become hostile if they suspect that someone is messing with their reality.

"Inception" only dabbles in the art of perception. For all its layering, the movie's depth remains on the surface.

But with its grand, clanging Hans Zimmer score, its immense, dazzling effects and audacious storytelling, it's 

the summer's best bet to bust the blocks.

Abandons baby was delivered in a plane toilet with an Indian woman

An unmarried Indian woman delivered a baby in the toilet of an international flight and abandoned the infant in the plane's washroom, police and doctors said Thursday..


Cabin crew of the Turkmenistan Airlines rushed the newborn to a hospital as the plane arrived in the northern Indian city of Amritsar on Wednesday, said Varinder Kumar, city police commissioner.

The toilet was taken to the hospital with the baby, and surgeons had to cut it away to get the newborn out, said H.P. Singh, a doctor at Amritsar's Fortis Escorts hospital.

The baby's condition was critical, Singh said, and it might take at least two to three days to recover. The mother admitted to the same hospital was, however, stable, he said.

"She was unmarried. It looks like she wanted to get rid of the baby," Singh said.

Police confirmed she was single and plan to question her once she was declared medically fit.

Abandoning newborns is an offense punishable up to seven years in jail, Kumar said.

"We will see what action can be taken (against her) after the interrogation," he said.

The mother, believed to be age 25, belongs to Punjab's Hoshiarpur district, according to police. Her flight had originated from Ashgabat in Turkmenistan, Kumar said.

In largely-conservative India, pre-marital sex remains a taboo.

Last year, India's federal woman rights watchdog ordered an investigation into reports young would-be-brides were subject to "virginity tests" for a mass wedding.

The alleged tests in June last year happened in Madhya Pradesh state controlled by conservative Hindu nationalists who are members of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.

But a district magistrate said they were simply "clinical examinations" initiated after one of the brides gave birth at a previous similar event.

Earlier this year, India's top court ruled live-in relationships between adult couples are not a crime.

The supreme court also quashed more than 20 cases against a south Indian actress for her comments on pre-marital sex in 2005, which had sparked angry protests.

Actress Khushboo, who uses one name, said her remarks aimed to highlight precautions that partners should take in order to prevent AIDS.

More than half of India's billion-plus population is below age 25, officials say.

With rapid modernization and a growing economy, the country's young work force has grown over the past few years.

But marriages remain a venerated custom in India.

Philippines tropical storm "BASYANG" death toll rises

The death toll from a tropical storm that tore through the Philippines this week has doubled.


The country's National Disaster Coordinating Council reported Thursday that 36 people died from Tropical Storm Conson. The previous death toll, reported Wednesday, was 18.

More than 40 people remained missing as of late Thursday, the council said.

The tally of damaged houses also increased from 500 to 11,230. More than 900 houses have been destroyed.

Conson, known locally as "Basyang," started as a typhoon before weakening to a tropical storm and making landfall late Tuesday.

At least four children died from the storm, including three who were struck by falling trees, authorities said.
The storm is expected to move northwest of the Philippines by Friday morning. Conson is likely to move into southern China on Friday, but the Joint Typhoon Warning Center is predicting little or no intensification before landfall there.

Heavy rain and flooding will be a concern for southern China.

Typhoon Conson strikes China

Typhoon Conson roared into China Friday near the city of Sanya, along the southern tip of the island of Hainan, around 7:15 p.m. (7:15 a.m. ET).


The storm, which already killed at least 39 people during its westward march across the Philippines earlier in the week, was packing maximum sustained winds of 139 kph (86 mph), according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, making it the equivalent of a Category One hurricane.

Southern China already has been battling severe flooding that has killed 135 people, destroyed about 113,000 homes and forced more than 1.2 million people to relocate this month, state media said Friday.
Typhoon roars through Philippines city

According to the Xinhua news agency, Chen Lei of the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said the coming rain would exacerbate the flooding.

Video: Conson blasts Philippines
Local governments should be prepared for disaster response, the National Marine Environment Forecast Center said.

In China, storms and floods have affected more than 35 million people in 10 provinces this month. By Thursday, the nation had recorded at least 26 billion yuan ($3.8 billion) in economic losses, Xinhua said.
Conson is forecast to move through the Gulf of Tonkin on Saturday, making a final landfall in northern Vietnam, near Hanoi, Saturday afternoon, said CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller.

Conson had weakened from a typhoon into a tropical storm, before its landfall in the Philippines late Tuesday, but that didn't keep the storm from wreaking havoc as it traversed the archipelago off of the Asian mainland. Conson then traveled across the South China Sea.

Along with the rising death toll, the Philippines' National Disaster Coordinating Council said Friday that 84 people were missing.